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04 November 2008

Help! Help! I'm teaching a business writing course, →[More:]and my students are about to begin a section on investor emails. In the past, I've used some "products" friends have "pitched" me (for example, an eco-friendly gym), but I find myself lacking inspiration this time. Any ideas you don't mind sharing for a potential business, product, or service? Feel free to be outlandish and ridiculous.

I'm not sure what an investor email is (not spam, right?)... but the halfbakery is a site where people post their ideas for fictitious inventions, like the Hullaballoon "tractor balloon driven airship", for example. You should be able to find lots of fun ideas listed there, plus they often go into all sorts of detail with schematics, etc., so that will give you some good content.

An idea I had this weekend: easy-open pickle jars. Heck, easy-open jars in general. The problem is that MuddDude tightens them to his "finger-tight", and I can't open them. Whereas if I close them myself, I can't close them tighter than I can open them. A little slip-torque system could activate at the loosest tightness necessary to preserve freshness.

Muddgirl-Your product actually sounds exactly like what one of my students pitched 5 years ago! I guess there is a serious market particularly for women, as she was a woman as well.

Taz-Thanks a lot for that site-sounds like it has exactly what I need. An investor email is essentially an email to a potential investor for a product, service, or business. It isn't spam as it should written to the specific investor and tailored A to his/her particular needs/background and B your specific needs from this investor. For example, say you were starting up a laudromat/coffee bar. You might write an investor email to a local popular coffee shop with its own brand of coffee. In exchange for supplying coffee at a discount price, you might provide them exclusive rights as your coffee supplier as well as free advertising in your establishment. Essentially, it's about persuading an audience. To make it exciting, as well as plagiarism proof, I change the type of business every other semester. But after a while one gets tapped of ideas.

Brujita-Damn, do I love the idea of a zombie stripper, but I know my students would totally suck the fun out of it-so I'm gonna keep it all to myself!